More Software News

The Linux Foundation has received the most revenue amongst all of the free software and open source non-profits and directly pays its leader the most, but the highest compensation of any sort is still being received by Mozilla Foundation Chair Mitchell Baker, along with her CTO Colleague Brendan Eich.

While Jeff Schmidt, the CEO of JAS Global Advisors, was surfing the Web on his new Android smartphone (his first Android phone) earlier this year, what appeared to be an ad popped up on his screen. The "ad" looked like the prompt that appears when his phone rings. He clicked the button on the ad to pick up the putative call, and the ad began downloading a binary file--malware--onto his Android phone. Schmidt had been hit by a drive-by download, a program that automatically installs malicious software on end-users' computers--and increasingly, smartphones--without them knowing.

A recent report that the government of Iceland is making progress in its efforts to adopt open-source software is the latest indication that public sector IT leaders are increasingly interested in moving away from proprietary products.

The story, "Chinese firm launches Android voice assistant for Mandarin speakers," which posted to the newswire Thursday, was missing a byline and was incorrectly sourced. The story was written by Michael Kan, of the IDG News Service Beijing bureau. The byline and source have been corrected in the story on the wire

Most owners of compromised websites don't know how their sites got hacked into and only 6 percent detect the malicious activity on their own, according to a report released by StopBadware and Commtouch on Thursday.

Many organizations continue to run Windows XP on many or all of their desktop PCs, either because migration typically requires costly hardware upgrades, time-consuming transfers of settings, and user retraining, or because there’s simply no compelling reason to move users to a new OS and the new application software that goes along with it. In some cases, both justifications apply.

Adobe is previewing the upcoming Photoshop CS6 photo editing software with a free beta now available to download. In a first move for Adobe, the free beta unveils a fully redesigned interface and brings fun tools such as iris blur and tilt shift, before the final version goes on sale this year for $700 for new users or from $200 for users who upgrade.

For the first time in seven years, Adobe has released a beta version of its flagship image editor in advance of a formal product release. Photoshop CS6 beta is now available as a free download from Adobe Labs in English and Japanese. The commercial release will follow fairly soon—sometime within the first half of this year.

Samsung Electronics will upgrade its Galaxy Note to Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich starting during the second quarter. The upgrade will also include new applications that take advantage of the device's digital pen, the company said on Thursday.

The location-based mobile services industry is already lucrative but has to do a better job easing consumers' fears about invasion of privacy, some executives said on Wednesday at the GPS-Wireless conference.

In fact, it's so big, it should be called the "Remains of the Last Two Days." We've got Tim Cook calling in an air strike on AT&T, a stealth Siri feature in iOS 5.1, and Microsoft nuking Apple devices from orbit. The remainders for Wednesday, March 21, 2012 are flanking--watch your six!